presented by with the support of stanford continuing studies Stanford Alumni Association Stanford University Libraries 12 issues of SHERLOCK HOLMES adventures brought to you by Stanford University in 2006. Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective April 12 14 of 12 2006 A SHERLOCK HOLMES ADVENTURE: THE FINAL PROBLEM A Brief Farewell to our Readers And Some Thoughts about 2007 e hope that you’ve enjoyed reading these adventures as much as we’ve enjoyed sending them to you – to all m 13,000 of you! And we assume that For more notes, illustrations, Wyou are as grieved by Sherlock Holmes’s passing as and background information, were Conan Doyle’s readers in 1893. Victorian read- ers had to wait into the new century for the author to please visit our website at capitulate to his public and bring the detective back to http://sherlockholmes.stanford.edu life in “The Adventure of the Empty House.” You will have to wait only nine months. In January of 2007, we will bring Sherlock Holmes back to life and begin a new series of his adventures. Join us and meet the elu- classrooms across the country, where a new generation sive Mycroft Holmes, venture further into the mind of Holmes enthusiasts is taking shape. and affections of Sherlock Holmes, as well as into the Look for an email from us in November, inviting holdings of Stanford’s Special Collections. you to subscribe again to the 2007 project, or just go to We are grateful to all of you for your enthusiasm our website after November 2006, and sign up again. for the project, as well as for your patience with the Best Regards from sometimes erratic delivery of your weekly copies. We Stanford’s Sherlock Holmes Team are especially indebted to those of you who have con- Stanford Continuing Studies tributed to this project. Your generosity has made it Stanford University Libraries possible for us to send Sherlock Holmes to homes and Stanford Alumni Association If your copy has not arrived by the end of the following week, please contact us at [email protected] or at 650-724-9588, and we will mail you another copy immediately. Conan Doyle and his first wife Lou- ise in the Alps, at around the time Conan Doyle “killed” Sherlock The Swiss boys staring at Conan Doyle and his Holmes. From friends might never have seen skis before. Skiing was The Strand Maga- a Scandinavian sport that Conan Doyle helped intro- zine (1894). duce to Switzerland. 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS “He saw the question in my eyes, and, putting his “Never have I risen to such a height, and never have I finger-tips together and his elbows upon his knees, he been so hard pressed by an opponent.” Compare this explained the situation.” From McClure’s Magazine, Moriarty to Sidney’s Paget’s—Edwards’s is heavier, vol. II, no. 1, January 1894. Illustrated by Harry Ed- less reptilian, and more like a stereotypical villain wards. (2) from a melodrama. (4) It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write papers on May 7th, and finally the recent letters to these the last words in which I shall ever record the which I have alluded. (1) singular gifts by which my friend Mr. Sherlock Hol- Reuters, opened in London in 1851 by a German mes was distinguished. (1) immigrant named Paul Julius Reuter, began by re- The “Final Problem” appeared in The Strand porting stock market quotations between European Magazine in December, 1893, although the events countries by telegraph. Where no telegraph lines had narrated therein are supposed to take place in 1891. yet been strung, Reuter used carrier pigeons. Later, The Strand’s reading public was outraged by what they Reuters developed into a news dispatch service that considered the premature death of a beloved charac- used telegraph and radio to transmit the news from ter. Over 20,000 people cancelled their subscriptions, overseas to British newspapers. and the magazine nearly went under. Forever after, The Strand’s staff referred to Holmes’s death as “the ...and I received two notes from Holmes, dated from dreadful event.” Narbonne and from Nimes.... (1) At his “death” in “The Final Problem,” Holmes is Narbonne and Nîmes are French cities, both lo- younger than most people think, perhaps because Sid- cated in the south. ney Paget’s drawings give him an air of maturity. In “His Last Bow,” which takes place in 1914 (and is told “Of air-guns.” (1) in the third person, not by Watson), Conan Doyle Because they use compressed air to shoot pro- puts Holmes’s age at about 60. Holmes could have jectiles, air guns are much quieter than guns using been born in or around 1854. In “The Final Prob- powder. Some Victorian gentlemen carried air guns lem,” therefore, he is not yet 40. disguised as canes. Holmes’s reasons for fearing air guns becomes clearer in “The Empty House.” ...“Study in Scarlet,” up to the time of his interference in the matter of the “Naval Treaty”.... (1) “At the age of twenty-one he wrote a treatise upon A Study in Scarlet was the first Holmes and Wat- the Binomial Theorem, which has had a European son story, a novelette published in Beeton’s Christmas vogue....” (2) Annual in late 1887. “The Naval Treaty,” published in Discovered by Euclid, and developed by Pascal The Strand in October and November, 1893, predated and Newton, the binomial theorem expresses the ex- “The Final Problem” by a month. pansion of a binomial (two variables added together) raised to a power. As far as I know, there have been only three accounts in the public press: that in the Journal de Genève on “But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most May 6th, 1891, the Reuter’s dispatch in the English diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood, NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS which, instead of being modified, was increased and “...I went out about midday to transact some business rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordi- in Oxford Street. As I passed the corner which leads nary mental powers.” (2) from Bentinck Street on to the Welbeck Street cross- Here, Conan Doyle refers to 19th-century scientist ing a two-horse van furiously driven whizzed round Cesare Lombroso’s theory of the “born” or “atavistic” and was on me like a flash.” (6) criminal. Moriarty is an exception among atavistic These are the names of actual London streets. criminals who appear in literature, however; instead of Holmes is just a few blocks from the foot of Baker having limited mental powers commensurate with his Street when he is attacked. increased animal appetites, he possesses both criminal intent and extraordinary intelligence. Many readers “...but as I walked down Vere Street....” (6) have noticed that Moriarty is an evil twin of Holmes, Vere Street turns into New Bond Street on the who turns his powers to crime instead of justice. south side of Oxford Street. “...and the rope for all of them....” (4) “I took a cab after that and reached my brother’s In other words, they will all be hanged. rooms in Pall Mall, where I spent the day.” (6) Sherlock hides out at his brother Mycroft Hol- “I was sitting in my room thinking the matter over, mes’s lodgings, across the street from his club, the when the door opened and Professor Moriarty stood Diogenes, where speaking to another member can be before me.” (4) cause for expulsion. Both Mycroft’s apartment and Moriarty only appears in two Holmes stories: the Diogenes are located near many other prestigious “The Final Problem” and the last of the four Hol- clubs, somewhere along Pall Mall. mes novels, The Valley of Fear. (Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s brother, only appears in three, although he “...and you will drive to the Strand end of the is mentioned in several others.) Nevertheless, read- Lowther Arcade....” (7) ers have remained fascinated with Sherlock Holmes’s The Lowther Arcade is a small, covered shopping dark opposite. Writers of pastiches of Conan Doyle’s work have taken great liberties with Moriarty’s char- acter. Was he indeed “the Napoleon of crime,” or was he an innocent scapegoat for some dark obsession of Holmes’s? Modern reworkings of the Conan Doyle canon, such as Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven Percent So- lution, often concentrate on Holmes’s unique psychol- ogy, in which Moriarty figures prominently. “His shoulders are rounded from much study, and his face protrudes forward, and is for ever slowly oscillating from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion.” (5) Holmes describes Moriarty in reptilian terms, as if his lack of humanity can be discerned in his physical makeup. “‘You have less frontal development than I should have expected,’ said he at last.” (5) In the 18th-century pseudo-science, phrenology, frontal development was believed to indicate great in- telligence. This idea, like other phrenological beliefs, eventually found its way into the anthropology of the time, which used racial characteristics as an indica- tor of evolutionary advancement. Moriarty’s remark is meant as an insult to Holmes’s brain capacity; Moriarty’s own skull “domes out in a white curve,” as Holmes himself notes. “‘You hope to place me in the dock. I tell you that I “‘My dear Watson,’ he said, ‘I write these few lines will never stand in the dock.’” (5) through the courtesy of Mr. Moriarty, who awaits my At British trials, the accused stands on a small convenience for the final discussion of those questions platform surrounded by a railing—the dock.